E.E. Smith alum Craig Raye tabbed to lead Westover football

The 61-year-old Fayetteville native has 27 years of college coaching experience.

Jaclyn Shambaugh Staff writer @jaclynshambaugh

Westover has picked Fayetteville native and longtime college football coach Craig Raye as its new head football coach.

“I feel blessed that this has happened for me,” Raye said. “I thank (Westover principal Vernon Lowery) and John McMillan, the athletic director, for giving me the opportunity to come back home.”

The hiring is pending the approval of the Cumberland County school board.

The 61-year-old graduated from E.E. Smith in 1974 and split his college football career between Austin Peay and Michigan State, where he was a part of the 1978 Big Ten Conference championship team.

He is the younger brother of longtime NFL coach and current senior advisor to the NFL’s executive vice president of football operations, Jimmy Raye.

Craig Raye has spent 27 years coaching at the collegiate level, serving stints in-state at Fayetteville State, N.C. A&T and Western Carolina, as well as out-of-state programs Wichita State, Wesleyan and Purdue.

Raye comes to Westover from Arkansas-Pine Bluff. He was a member of the Golden Lions coaching staff for 10 years, most recently as the team’s wide receivers coach and recruiting coordinator.

He takes over the Wolverines from Stephen Roberson, who announced earlier this month that he was leaving Westover to become the head coach at C.A. Johnson in Columbia, South Carolina.

“The position itself has a great tradition,” Raye said. “I’ve followed it through the years. Westover has a tradition of winning, and this is an opportunity to get on board with a new administration and staff there.”

Roberson coached the Wolverines for three seasons, taking over the program in January 2014 after the team had gone winless in the fall of 2013.

The Wolverines suffered through a one-win season in his first year, but Roberson put them on track shortly after, eventually leading them to a share of the Cape Fear Valley 3-A Conference title last season and their first playoff appearance since 2012.

Westover finished the season at 8-4 overall and 5-1 in the CFV, ending the year with a 35-34 loss to Jacksonville in the first round of the NCHSAA playoffs.

Raye’s hiring comes about two weeks after Roberson’s departure, filling the hole during the critical spring conditioning portion of the football offseason.

Westover athletic director John McMillan said the administration wanted to fill the position as soon as possible while still finding the best candidate.

“It was important to make a decision quickly,” the A.D. said. “But we needed to make sure that we got the right person with the amount of experience that could handle the quick transition.”

McMillan said Raye was “hands down, the best person for the job.”

“He has an impeccable resume,” McMillan said. “Not only that, but he has the connections to colleges and universities to not only speak to the athletic side of our kids, but also the academic piece. So he’ll be a great resource to help kids get into college. He just brings a lot to the table.”

Raye said he’ll keep things simple working on such a short timetable to prepare for the fall season. He’ll make assembling his coaching staff his first priority, giving consideration to coaches from last year’s staff.

“We probably won’t do much tinkering of anything,” the coach said. “It’s very late in the summer, and they had an outstanding team last year, so it really shouldn’t be a problem as far as getting them going. It’s just a matter of philosophy and terminology.”

As part of the athletic association’s realignment plan for 2017-21, 3-A Westover will move into the Patriot Conference, a split 4-A/3-A league made up of eight Cumberland County schools and Overhills.

“It’s going to be an interesting challenge,” Raye said of the realignment. “We’re just going to have to play up. Obviously, some of the teams will have more players than we have, but I think it’ll be a good opportunity for the kids to play 4-A ball.”

Raye said he’s given himself a two-week period to move from Arkansas back to Fayetteville.

“In this profession, with coaching, you don’t unpack, you just unload,” Raye said. “I still have some of the boxes with some of the stickers on them from when I was up at Western Carolina, so I’ll load it up as quickly as possible and try to get back.”

Staff writer Jaclyn Shambaugh can be reached at jshambaugh@fayobserver.com or 609-0651.

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